No Substitute for Progress: qasida

Posted on June 22, 2025 by JRL

Salutations and our greeting.
Welcome to this special meeting.
As you know, our time is fleeting,
so please take your assigned seating.

We control a heart that’s beating.
Ever forward, no retreating.
Never mind the lambs, their bleating
will grow softer. They’re just tweeting.

Taste the fatted calf we’re eating,
as this project nears completing,
raised free-range, on grain, no cheating,
farm-to-table, heart still beating.

All the numbers say we’re beating
anyone who tried competing.
We’re as sound as central heating.
Our position is concreting.

Still, this message bears repeating:
going soft is self-defeating.
Never mind the weak entreating
you for mercy in defeating.

This concludes our special meeting.
Please return your hood and sheeting.
The exit survey you’re completing
keeps our cause from obsoleting.

22 Jun 2025

© 2025, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.

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Dog in the Rain: Burns stanza

Posted on June 20, 2025 by JRL

When the gods start bowling in the sky,
my wee, little dog starts in to cry
and seeks a spot secure and up high,
tucked behind my head.
She whines ’til the thunderstorm goes by
and will not go to bed.

She’s such a brave and fearsome critter,
but howling, loud winds set her a jitter.
Listen to how her heart goes pitter
pat. Her quaking chest
betrays her fear. She’s all a twitter,
and can get no rest.

When the dark skies are weeping sadly
my sweet dog is behaving badly:
she sneaks under my pillow, gladly,
to hide from the storm,
and cries and whimpers, low and madly
tho’ she’s inside and warm.

20 Jun 2025

© 2025, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.

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No Time: rimas dissolutas

Posted on June 20, 2025 by JRL

There is no time, we cannot start again.
The clocks do not run backwards on command,
nor do the years reverse their gears on queue.

You cannot substitute a now for then,
nor rearrange the instance where you stand.
There is no try again, just simply do.

Besides, who wants to just relive the past,
imagining again those glory days
or that crushing defeat? Who needs the stress?

It’s only memory that really lasts,
until it disappears into a haze
that we call history. Well, more or less.

There is no time but now, and it exists
for just this moment only, and no more.
What starts must surely finish when it’s done.

So let it go. It’s useless to resist.
Besides, what good is all forever for?
There is a thing as having too much fun.

20 Jun 2025

© 2025, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.

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With a Whisper: rhopalic verse

Posted on June 20, 2025 by JRL

A little whispering, un-hearable
by any listening un-awakened,
can convey purposeful information.

It appears trivial, unimportant,
to someone expecting revelation,
but supports meaningful activity.

On hearing transmitted encouragement,
the human animal transmogrifies.
It becomes completely integrated.

20 Jun 2025

© 2025, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.

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Watching the Sunset: rannaigheacht ghairid

Posted on June 19, 2025 by JRL

Who am I
to wonder at earth and sky
from such a small, useless spot?
I’ve got bigger fish to fry.

It seems odd,
to ponder fate, time and god,
to waste time at such a game.
All the same, my plan’s not flawed.

Honestly.
What other way could life be?
There’s so much of it to do,
and when it’s through, we are free.

Who can tell
what harm’s done to sit a spell,
and just watch the setting sun?
When it’s done, the day ends well.

19 Jun 2025

© 2025, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.

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The Dancing Bells: quintilla

Posted on June 19, 2025 by JRL

The world seems so out of balance.
Perhaps it’s only me and mine.
Sometimes the music for the dance
makes every step a dotted line
with the next motion left to chance.

The world keeps spinning, just the same.
It doesn’t matter if the tune
is out of rhythm. Who’s to blame
when one foot shifts its weight too soon?
It’s just a dance. It’s just a game.

The world goes on and on in time,
while we are here a while, then gone,
just shadows, fading and sublime,
whether of queens, bishops, or pawns.
We dance on, while the bells still chime.

19 Jun 2025

© 2025, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.

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Outside the Cage: Sicilian quintet

Posted on June 18, 2025 by JRL

Physical confinement has its source
in some external entity that binds.
It is imposed by outside will, of course.
But slavery is not just of that kind;
your mind’s created prisons reinforce

the limitations you are taught to see,
the walls that form the edges of the box
in which you play out your brief history.
It has no doors or windows, and no locks,
but keeps what is outside a mystery.

It takes so little to remove the lid,
but once you’ve seen outside, your goose cooked.
You cannot take it back, and if you did,
there’s no way to describe what in one look
destroys all that you learned when still a kid.

Your chains you forge in life are your own brand.
The steel in them is alloyed from your acts.
There is no crushing heel or helping hand,
no unseen other twisting simple facts.
You are the ship, the ocean, and the land.

Inside the cage you build to hold you in,
there is just one sure way to be set free:
forget all that you know. Once you begin
to let that go, your eyes, now dull, will see,
and recognize exactly where you’ve been.

18 Jun 2025

© 2025, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.

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